Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments Read online

  The light is dim, almost gone. Our campsite is only a few hundred yards up from the clearing where the meeting is, but I still worry about finding it in the dark. Funny how a big, horrible worry doesn’t wipe out all the little worries. They’re like bugs. They survive no matter what.

  Bluish lights spread around the edge of the clearing, creating a glow that resembles moonlight. It’s just enough to guide me and Lauren and Catlin through the clearing without bumping into anything or anyone. Even in the dim light, I can see that a lot of people are already here. I can feel them, too, even more clearly than I can see them. They feel confused. And suspicious. And hopeful. And scared. Some of these thoughts come from the same people, one right after another like machine-gun fire. Being telepathic doesn’t exactly clear up the human psyche. In fact, there’s a lot of confusion and contradiction in most people, which is both comforting (at least I’m not the only one) and disturbing (we’re totally messed up).

  Now that the sun’s down, the temperature is falling fast. A fire would be nice. A fire should be our right as human beings. Even cavemen and cavewomen sat around fires and discussed caveman and cavewoman things, like maybe the best size for a club or whether a leopard skin was better than a bear skin on cold winter nights. But here we are back in the forest, this time the hunted and not the hunters, without even a fire to keep us warm.

  I hate them, I think. I hate them so much.

  “Ouch,” Catlin says. “Careful.”

  Others are looking at me.

  “Your anger,” she says. “It’s like you pinched me.”

  “You felt that?”

  “I didn’t feel anything,” Lauren says, her earlier disapproval sneaking back into her voice. “Or not much, anyway.”

  “You don’t realize how strong you are,” Catlin says. “You have to control your feelings, or block them from us at least.”

  “Sorry,” I say to those sitting closest to me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” one of them says. “You’ll learn.”

  “It was a whisper,” Lauren says stubbornly, “if it was anything.”

  This is hard for Lauren. She is used to being the smartest person in a room. She was going to be valedictorian at her school. But this telepathic kind of mind power is different from intelligence. If Albert Einstein showed up, he’d still be the smartest person alive, but he might be a telepathic moron. He’d be all, “But I discovered the theory of relativity. Ever heard of E = mc2?” Wouldn’t matter. That would be hard on Einstein. It’s hard on Lauren.

  More people come into the clearing, including Doc and another old guy whose long white hair is tied back in a ponytail and who makes about two Docs in size. They stand on a raised platform backed up against a row of trees. The crowd gathers in front of them, filling up rows of split-log benches that form a semicircle around the platform.

  Doc is small and neat, with white hair and one of those pointy white beards, like Colonel Sanders had. His real name is Lorenzo Sergio de Cabeza, so it’s not hard to understand why I’m relieved he goes by Doc. He looks like a professor, which makes sense since he was one; his nickname comes from his two PhDs.

  “First, I’d like to welcome the newest members of our group to our town meeting,” Doc says. “Could the new members please come to the front?”

  Lauren, the great joiner, smiles enthusiastically and leads us toward the stage. Catlin has the same pained expression I imagine on my face, but we obediently follow. Two others — a young boy and an older girl who’s about our age — step forward from Doc’s right.

  As I follow Lauren up front, a buzz of inner voices says things like New bloods and Not of the House of Jupiter and Clan of Wind and Jesse and The Warrior Spirit. At least I hear a few dissenting voices. Someone thinks, That can’t be the one with the Warrior Spirit in him. No heroic glow.

  The new boy and girl look like they might be siblings. They’re both tall and thin, with huge blue eyes and short, uneven blond hair.

  Doc says that before we begin we should have a moment of silence for the dead. “There’ll be a funeral service tomorrow at dawn,” Doc adds. “In the graveyard.” And then the silence. It’s the noisiest silence I’ve ever experienced. I hear everyone. I feel what others are feeling, too. It hurts. Losing someone hurts so much. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I feel like I’m drowning, like there’s no way I’ll get back to the surface. It wasn’t this way back at Lord Vertenomous’s. It was never this strong, never so everywhere at once. More pain comes at me. It’s like being stung all over by bees.

  Doc touches me on the back, and the voices drop away to a whisper. I think he’s done something, and I feel relief and gratitude. I take deep breaths.

  You have to shield yourself, or the voices will overwhelm you. They think they’re shielded, but they aren’t. Not from you. So you’re going to have to shield yourself. Watch me, and try to do what I do.

  He shows me how to shield. It’s sort of like pulling a curtain, an invisible one, around myself, then thickening it to keep out the sounds. It takes me a few tries, and even then my shield’s not nearly as strong as his, but it’s a definite improvement.

  Good, he thinks. It will keep your thoughts hidden, too. You can control what you show and what is shown to you. You see?

  “I think so,” I say.

  As Doc returns to the platform, I turn to Lauren to see if I can help her block out the voices, but she doesn’t seem bothered by them.

  Doc introduces us to the crowd — the boy and girl are named Zack and Zelda — and says we make fifty-two newcomers. He says it’s time we stopped thinking of ourselves as Wind Clan or Thunder Clan of the House of Jupiter or the House of Apollo and started thinking of ourselves as New America.

  “It’s a new world,” he says, “and we are the survivors. It’s time we became something new and inclusive. We’ll be like America once was to the rest of the world. We will welcome all. New America. What say others?”

  Others say a lot — though most of them don’t use their mouths. Some think New Bloods (those of us who changed because of contact with the aliens) and people from other houses can’t be trusted, shouldn’t be trusted. Some agree with Doc, though, and think all survivors should unite.

  Someone mindspeaks, If the Spirit of the Warrior comes to one from outside the houses and clans, all has changed. We must change.

  If, someone else mindspeaks doubtfully. If.

  The man beside Doc, the one who makes two of him, raises his massive arms. He has brown, leathery skin and a wide, blunt nose. The voices go silent.

  “I’m Running Bird, for those of you who don’t know me,” he says, looking right at me.

  My first thought is Don’t you mean Flying Bird? But then I remember there is a bird that runs: the roadrunner. Then I hear something strange even in this strange new world. I hear “Beep beep!” in my mind — the sound of the roadrunner from the cartoon.

  “Also called Sam White. I’m a real, live Navajo, Hispanic, white, African-American American, in case you’re wondering. All of you better put aside all your prejudices against New Bloods and other houses and Native American, Hispanic, white, African-American Americans because the aliens are coming for us. I saw in a dream that the House of Vulcan is no more. I saw it, and it is true. If we are to survive, we have to join together.”

  Voices in the crowd are saying that the House of Vulcan is strong and cannot be destroyed, but we all know it can. We have been conquered. The conquered know things that the unconquered don’t. One of the things the conquered know is that anything can be destroyed.

  “Alien hunters track us,” Running Bird says. “Doc is right. We need every survivor we can get. We are all New America or we are lost.”

  “We are the Clan of the Wind of the House of Jupiter,” someone says, and I see that someone is the blond guy again. “We are two thousand years old, and we will survive. Running Bird’s vision just makes it clearer how. We must hide. I will lead us to the caves in Mexico my grandfather sho
wed me. I will lead the way.”

  Dylan. I hear his name in the minds of others. And something else: Doc’s son. I see the physical resemblance, though Dylan is lighter in color than Doc and muscular and has long, straight blond hair. But I had a strong feeling of trust when I met Doc, and I feel just as strongly about Dylan — only the feeling is the opposite.

  Running Bird says, “The aliens will track us wherever we go. We cannot hide.”

  “The caves will protect us,” says Dylan. “No one knows about them but me. We can survive in the caves.”

  Running Bird shakes his head. “And then what?”

  “We will build a city below the earth, and we will grow stronger. We will live. And someday we’ll return to the surface. Someday it will be safe. But until that day, we will live under the ground. And in the future they’ll tell stories about us and how we saved mankind.”

  Stories about him. He thinks they’ll tell stories about him. I feel his yearning for these stories.

  There are a lot of voices then. Most of them agree with Dylan. Run. Hide. Live. I get it. I understand. Run, hide, live sounds better than stay, fight, die. If those are the choices, then I’m with the majority. Are those the choices?

  If I remember right, the humans in the Matrix movies hide in caves to escape the machines, but their city is annihilated and they are nearly wiped out. That’s an ending I want to avoid. Okay, it’s just a movie, but hiding seems wrong to me.

  My friends and I thought the aliens were too strong and we had no choice but to be slaves in order to survive. But then Betty walked up to one of the aliens and slapped him. Crack! Right across the face. A beautiful sound. He killed her, but for a second she blocked him — actually blocked him. And that’s when we knew: the aliens aren’t invincible. Awesomely powerful, yes. Invincible, no. It’s the kind of difference that makes fighting possible.

  They’re not too strong to fight.

  At first I think someone else says this, but then I realize it’s me. Mindspeak. It just slips out. A couple hundred eyes turn toward me. I probably have that deer-caught-in-headlights look, but I know I have to say something.

  “My friends and I fought them. We escaped from them. They’re not all-powerful. They can be defeated.” I try to hide my doubt. I don’t think I’m all that successful.

  But I know more. A secret. Something that a friendly Sanginian — there is such a thing, if you can believe that — told me and Catlin and Lauren. Something that not even Running Bird or Doc could know. More aliens are coming. Settlers out there in ships are on their way to Earth right now. And if we’re huddled in caves waiting to get strong enough to fight aliens, we’ll most likely never be strong enough because they will fill the planet. I almost say this. Almost. But I stop myself because it feels overwhelming, like telling this crowd about the aliens will be like telling them to give up. Might as well hide in caves and live out the rest of our miserable lives and give up Earth. I can’t accept that. I won’t.

  “This meeting isn’t about staying or running,” Doc says. He lets his eyes rest on Dylan a second before going on. “There will be time for that. This meeting is about understanding we’re a new country, all of us. We are New America.”

  “Every meeting is about staying or running,” Dylan says.

  Father and son glare at each other, the resemblance clearer than ever. Then an image appears in my mind. It’s Dylan and his father in a tent lit by a lamp. Dylan is looking down at his father, who’s on a cot or something. And Dylan is trying to look sad, but he doesn’t feel sad. He feels almost . . . happy. He does feel happy.

  The image disappears but leaves me feeling confused and a little freaked. It’s like that vision of me fighting the alien in Taos. It feels like more than just my admittedly overactive imagination. It feels real. But it can’t be. I’m so tired. I need to sleep. Maybe I just need sleep.

  “We will vote on the creation of New America,” Doc says, ignoring his son.

  Some people want more discussion, though, and so they go around and around again for another fifteen or twenty minutes.

  At last they vote. New America wins by a narrow majority. I wonder if it was this way when old America, those struggling colonies, decided they were a country. Here in the rebel camp, people celebrate. A few people slap me and Lauren and Catlin on the back, welcoming us into New America. The truth is, I don’t feel so much happy as relieved. We don’t have to leave.

  I’m about to head back to camp with Lauren, Catlin, and the other newbies, Zack and Zelda. But before I manage to work my way out of the crowd, Doc summons me with mindspeak. Now what?

  “You guys go on,” I say to my friends.

  Catlin looks at me funny, like she’s worried about me. For just a second I wonder if she saw what I saw, the daydream or whatever it was of Doc and Dylan. But I know she didn’t. Lauren just shrugs, says, “See you back at camp,” and leads Zelda and Zack back down the trail. Catlin is the last to go.

  I head back over to the platform, where Doc, Running Bird, and another man are waiting for me.

  It turns out my shield wasn’t quite as effective as I’d hoped, because Doc heard me thinking about what the Sanginian smuggler told us back in Austin.

  “How many settlers?” Doc asks.

  I don’t bother pretending I’m confused by the question. “He said thirty million would be here soon.”

  “Thirty million,” Running Bird says like he’s cursing.

  “Then all is lost,” the third man says. He’s fair skinned, but he gets even paler. “We can’t fight thirty million.”

  “He told me — the smuggler,” I say when I see their questioning expressions. “This alien smuggler. He said it wasn’t, you know, inevitable. The aliens might not settle here if they had a reason not to.”

  There isn’t any big sigh of relief over this minute possibility from Doc, Running Bird, or the third man. No one says, “Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?” The third man, who Doc introduces as Robert Penderson, says, “I don’t understand. They’re already here. What would keep more from coming?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “The Chosen One is right,” Running Bird says. “We cannot fight thirty million, but maybe we can fight however many thousands are here and keep the thirty million from coming. Maybe we can do that. The spirit in the boy speaks from the depths of the prophecy.”

  Depths of the prophecy? Does anyone ever say stuff like that? Running Bird does, I guess.

  “It came from the mouth of an alien, not from the depths of any prophecy,” I say.

  “But it isn’t the alien who delivers this message to us. It is you,” Running Bird insists.

  “Catlin or Lauren could have told you the same thing,” I point out.

  “But you told us.”

  “Because Doc called me back.”

  “It is written, and what is written will be.”

  “What’s that even mean? Written where? By who?” I know I sound angry and confused, but that’s because I’m, well, angry and confused.

  “It means everything is written down in the Big Book. All that has happened, is happening, and will happen is already written.”

  “In the Big Book,” I say. “What big book?”

  “The Big Book.”

  “That clears things up. Thanks.”

  “We have existed, exist, will exist. It’s just an illusion that moments come and go, that there is a past separate from the present separate from the future. That people are born, then live, then die. All of that is going on all the time — past, present, and future. We just can’t see it. Clearer?”

  Doc and Robert Penderson look like this is not the first time they’ve heard Running Bird talk like this, but that they wish maybe it was. I wonder what my mother would have said to him. I wish she were here. I wish that a lot.

  “Why don’t you just take a look in the Big Book, then?” I say. “You’ll see I’m not this Chosen One.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. Onl
y the Creator can look at the Big Book. We mortals sometimes, if we’re very, very lucky, get glimpses. Even other gods, like the Warrior, don’t get much of a look. The Creator is stingy that way.”

  “Wait,” I say, trying to smile dismissively. “Are you saying you think I might be infected with the spirit of a god?”

  “Not infected,” Running Bird says, sounding offended. “Blessed.”

  I’m saved from having to discuss my infection/blessing further by Robert Penderson, who starts muttering, “Thirty million. Thirty million coming.”

  “We’ll find a way, Robert,” Doc says, placing a hand on the guy’s shoulder.

  “Meanwhile,” Doc says to me, “keep this to yourself, Jesse. People are already panicked enough. We don’t want to make them worse.”

  “Lauren and Catlin know,” I remind him.

  “Tell them to tell no one.”

  As I walk up toward our campsite through the thick, dark woods, I think, All of it is right here and right now — the past, the present, and the future. All of it? How can that be? My mother would give a clear grammatical explanation for why this shouldn’t be allowed. Verbs tell time. End of story. Time can’t just ignore grammar. I smile thinking this because I can hear my mother’s voice.

  Whatever that Big Book of Running Bird’s says, I feel one thing. I’m tired of running. I want to fight. No matter what, I want to fight.

  When I get to the campsite, Lauren, Catlin, Zack, and Zelda are sitting around where our fire would be if we could have a fire. Which we can’t.

  The cold seeps through my thin jacket. A fire would make the whole night better. A flickering orange in the dark to light up our faces, a source of heat to warm our hands. Is it too much to ask?

  I’m pretty sure heroes don’t whine. They quietly endure cold, fireless nights. Further proof I’m no hero.

  Someone coughs from one of the tents, and from not far off in the woods, something scurries over leaves. A small animal? I trip over a root as I try to sit next to Lauren. I land harder than planned next to her. She puts her arm around me, which lightens my darkening mood. Lauren doesn’t expect me to be a hero. She knows that if we have any chance of defeating the aliens, we’ll do it by working together, not because of the mysterious powers of some prophesized Chosen One.